


I’m Going To Be Here 'til Forever (So Just Call When You’re Around)

by kathikon



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avoiding Your Problems, Emotionally Repressed, Happy Ending, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, Just Covering My Bases With All These Tags, Light Angst, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Phone Calls & Telephones, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24833230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathikon/pseuds/kathikon
Summary: Brad needs something more than lingering looks, fingers brushing over a map, the heavy silence that hangs between him and the Lieutenant, those green eyes burning into him like embers.
Relationships: Brad Colbert/Nate Fick
Comments: 14
Kudos: 80
Collections: Heavy Artillery Rolling Remix 2020





	I’m Going To Be Here 'til Forever (So Just Call When You’re Around)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "Mountains" by Message to Bears
> 
> No disrespect/assumptions are being made about any real people. This is a work of fiction based on the HBO Miniseries starring Alexander Skarsgard, Stark Sands, and others.
> 
> Written for the Heavy Artillery Rolling Remix 2020

Brad doesn’t know when this started, when he started gravitating towards Fick, searching for him in the sea of close-cropped hair and identical uniforms, amongst the faces too-thin from one MRE a day, from not enough sleep, not enough anything but stress and the sheer incompetence of the chain of command.

He looks for him when he has free time, in Camp Pendleton, in Mathilda, all the way across Mesopotamia like some goddamn schoolgirl pining after her playground crush.

Maybe he craves it– something substantial– and as much as he tells himself he's never going to let himself get attached to someone in the way he did to his ex, Brad needs something more than lingering looks, fingers brushing over a map, the heavy silence that hangs between him and the Lieutenant, those green eyes burning into him like embers.

He wonders if his feelings for his commanding officer make him a bad Marine when he seeks out Nate in Babylon. 

They’re listening to Ishmael talk from behind the gaggle of Marines, armed to the teeth and straining to hear every word.

As they pass under the Ishtar gate and Ishmael briefly mentions that it’s a replica, that the original, now in Germany, is far more magnificent, that it was grander than they could imagine, festooned with depictions of bulls, lions, and dragons.

He finally catches up to him as they cross the flat area of cobblestones towards a statue.

Brad the Great, he jokes, finally breaking the odd silence that’s lingered between them for days.

Nate smiles at that, trying to keep his face serious, but Brad can see his personality peeking through, the _real_ Nate, not Lieutenant Fick, but the man behind the rank.  
“If you’re playing Alexander, does that make me Hephaestion?” he asks, voice rough and soft enough that nobody can hear it but them and the way the words make Brad’s knees weak can’t be unintentional. The man was a _fucking classics major–_ he knows exactly what he’s saying, all the implications there clear as day.  
Nate gives him a serious look, eyes unreadable, pupils pulled into pinpricks from the brilliant sunlight as they stood just outside the shadow of the great stone Lion of Babylon, the faceless beast staring off across the smoldering city of Hillah.  
“If you want to be, maybe.” He lets the suggestion hang there in the air, watches the heat rise up off the earth in shimmering waves.

Nate doesn’t answer, just stands at his side, close enough that Brad aches to reach out, to pull him closer, kiss him softly again as they did in the cigarette factory, all chapped lips and brief touches.

But he doesn’t, and so the tour continues, interrupted briefly by Poke's lottery theory, and when it’s over, he’s wandered far enough away to stare out across the plains, and wonders what it would be like if he asked Nate to stay.

He doesn’t do that either.

Nate leaves at the end of the year, and despite the fact that he’s known the man won’t stay ever since Al Kut, it still hurts that he’s leaving the Corps, leaving _Brad_ behind to return to his old life.

But there’s no point in thinking too much about it, so he helps make Nate’s paddle, spends too much time trying to ignore the ugly confused feelings in him by throwing himself into the work.

He buys the pins to match Nate’s stack of ribbons, sands for hours and hours until his knuckles hurt and there’s sawdust clinging to his eyelashes and the fine hairs of his arms despite the two showers he takes, until he’s put blood, sweat, and tears into this _thing_ he presents Nate with in the light of the evening sunshine and little paper lanterns that decorate Mike Wynn’s back patio.

Later, after everyone’s told their stories and is well on the way to getting truly and severely drunk, he finds Nate in the kitchen, leaning against the sink and watching him through heavy-lidded eyes.

“Captain,” he offers, holding his lukewarm beer in one hand.

“Nate,” the man corrects, sipping on something from a plastic cup. Brad thinks it might be a margarita.

He feels oddly exposed without his uniform, without his weapon, because standing here, both of them in civvies, it almost feels like they could be just friends. 

He knows that they aren’t.

This is what he tells himself, up to the point Nate is pushing him back against the counter, mouths pressed together like they were meant to fit. It’s soft and chaste until all at once it isn’t, and he can taste the beer and lime and tequila on Nate’s tongue when he licks filthy into Brad’s mouth.

They’re going to get caught like this, in Mike’s kitchen, but Brad can’t even find himself caring anymore.

Somehow, they end up back at Brad’s house, and there’s a trail of clothes strewn from the front door to his bedroom, but it doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters except Nate’s sweet mouth and the way he arches and his hands digging bruises into Brad’s hips when he screams his name.

“I’ll wait for you,” Nate whispers, still half-drunk, voice hoarse when they’re laying in the dark together, one arm over Brad’s chest, tracing patterns into the soft skin between his collarbone and arm. “When you finally leave the Corps.”

“I know, Nate.” It’s all he can say, all he knows how to say, so he ducks down, craning his neck to press a soft kiss against Nate’s mouth. “I know.”

Brad doesn’t leave.

He makes it to fifteen, then twenty, then twenty-one years in the Marine Corps, until he's a Master Sergeant and a world away from the crucible he was forged in and his time in the sandbox feels like nothing more than a distant memory, hazy with time.

The one thing that never goes away is those green eyes.

Nate’s become some politician or CEO or whatever you get to be after you go to Harvard, he remembers it mentioned once in an email he got from Ray, some years back. He doesn’t keep tabs on his old commanding officer much, but he’s not sure if it’s because he can’t handle the pain or if he’s finally moved on.

Brad knows he hasn’t.

When he gets out of the Corps, he’s not sure if it’s relief or what. He comes back to California and the weather hasn’t changed from the endless sunshine, but there’s a slight chill in the air and fog rolls up from the sea in a heavy blanket every night. All it does is remind him of the morning Nate left, just a quiet excuse that Brad doesn’t remember anymore, the door closing behind him with an aching finality.

He doesn’t dwell on it for too long.

When Brad finally gears himself up to pick up the phone, to make the call he’s been avoiding for thirteen years, he’s almost relieved when Nate doesn’t answer. Though, it’s about three in the morning in Washington D.C., so he supposes that it was expected.

What he doesn’t expect, however, is being woken up at four, ringtone loud and blaring when he rolls over, groggy, groping around his bedside table for his phone.

“Hello?” he asks, voice still thick with sleep.

“Is everything ok?”

_Oh._

Nate’s voice is almost frantic– like calling him was the first thing he did after waking up. Brad’s brain works for a moment, gears spinning, too many thoughts all smeared together as he wakes up.

“I got out,” he says finally, and there’s a sense of finality in his statement, and it hangs there for a silent heartbeat, yet it feels like a lifetime when he starts to speak again. “Nate–“ Brad runs a hand through his hair, trying to get the words out properly.

“I know, Brad.” He sounds tired, worn down in the way Brad remembered from the months, over a decade ago now, they spent in the desert. 

He wonders, if they were together now, if he could look at Nate, if his eyes were still the same, still so sad and old beyond his years.

He wants to laugh, to cry, maybe, because despite everything, he’s still gravitating towards this man, who he hasn’t seen in almost a decade, with who he’d never shared more than a single night, a chaste kiss, a brush of hands, knowing glances all the way across a country that the war they were at the start of hasn’t even finished in.

“Did you wait?”

The silence drags on, so long that Brad’s ready to hang up, to pretend this was all some bad dream because it’s been _years_ and Nate probably didn’t even remember his own words, but finally he replies.

“Yeah.” He sounds like he's smiling, and Brad lets his mind wander a little, wonders if Nate still laughs like he’s lost control of himself, like a wildfire.

“Go back to bed, Colbert.” Brad can hear the smile in his voice now, wide and real and it makes his heart ache with how badly he misses the man. “And-“ there’s a moment’s pause like he’s testing the water, “-let me know when your plane lands. I’ll come pick you up.”

That’s all Brad needs.


End file.
